CALGARY — Animal rights activists consider it among the most horrific practices inflicted on animals raised for food. But for Rick Bergman, who has been raising hogs for three decades and is vice chair of the Canadian Pork Council, using gestation crates are simply the most humane and efficient way to breed a sow.

Those who think otherwise, he said Thursday, don’t spend much time around the animals they’re trying to defend.

“I don’t mean to belittle people who have not grown up on a farm, but I believe there needs to be an education process to help people understand what we do. If you go to Google and punch in ‘sow’ or ‘hog farm,’ that’s not necessarily going to give you a true representation of what the industry is,” he said.

Most pig breeders in Canada use what are known as “sow stalls” or “gestation crates.” They’re narrow pens used to confine and feed pregnant pigs, usually not much larger than the animals themselves. Farmers say the individual pens allow them to maintain animal welfare by monitoring food and separating the sows from other aggressive animals.

Yet Internet campaigns are increasingly informing consumers’ demands, ultimately affecting not only the stores where they purchase their products, but the people who produce them as well. This week, the Retail Council of Canada announced its members would voluntarily phase out use of sow-stall-raised meat by 2022. The Retail Council encompasses chains such as Safeway, Costco, Loblaw, Metro, Sobeys and Walmart — about 90% of the food sold in grocery stores in Canada.

Dave Wilkes, the Retail Council’s senior vice president, said the organization would collaborate with pork producers to create clear guidelines.

“This is not only being done in the spirit of collaboration, it’s also being done in the spirit of responding to the demands of the marketplace,” he said. “All retailers are completely focused on responding to the demands of the consumers. Ultimately they want to ensure they’re providing products the consumers are demanding.”

That’s fair enough, Mr. Bergman said, but it misses the point; his Manitoba hog farm uses sow stalls because he believes that’s the most humane way to raise a pregnant pig.

When he first entered the industry, he tried raising hogs outdoors, he said.

“The outside climate doesn’t really bring any good security,” Mr. Bergman said. “They’ve got climate and weather to deal with and so on.”

Then the farmer brought his stock inside to live in group pens — the method now being advocated by Humane Society International Canada — and found pregnant sows were under constant stress due to being attacked by other pigs.

‘They’re not big athletes. They’ve got a bunch of little piglets inside them and they don’t want to do any running’

“We saw the pros and cons of using pens and then decided to put up individual pens, or gestation stalls, or maternity pens,” he said. “The reason why we did that is that enabled us to give the animal the right amount of feed, not too much, not too little.”

Further, he said, pregnant sows don’t tend to need a lot of room. Individual pens, or crates, gives them a safe place to breed.

“I’ve had them sitting in open houses and in individual houses and they like lying around. They’re not big athletes,” he said. “They’ve got a bunch of little piglets inside them and they don’t want to do any running around.”

Gestation crates caught the concern of consumers late last year after an animal rights group that promotes veganism released a tape showing the practice at a farm in Manitoba. But if consumers demand stall-free pigs, just as they pine for free-range eggs, Mr. Bergman said, they will eventually wind up paying the price.

“It would require a premium for me to entertain, but there would have to be strong research done to say that it would be good welfare for that sow,” he said. “Our industry has been built on research and science, so if science says something, and if there’s a benefit to that, our industry will look at it. That’s how you make sound decisions.”